


If you can't beat 'em...

by Lani



Series: roman holiday [1]
Category: Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot | They Call Me Jeeg (2015), Wolf (2013)
Genre: Crossover, If You Squint - Freeform, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:20:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26326288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lani/pseuds/Lani
Summary: Majid has made it to Rome, sort of, but getting by on his own is hard. Someone shows up on the scene to offer an alternative.
Relationships: Fabio Cannizzaro/Majid Zamari
Series: roman holiday [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977745
Comments: 5
Kudos: 60





	If you can't beat 'em...

**Author's Note:**

> [ furiously ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/furiously/pseuds/furiously) made me do it.

His pulse pounds in his knuckles. He feels the blood as it drools down his fingers, hot and thick. The world is briefly limited to this window: a blurry cutout of the ground, the shape of his clenched fists, and a slowly twisting shape at the edge of his vision. Majid breathes the fumes of the city. He lets the air fill his lungs, expand them and push against his aching ribcage. It will take a hot second before his adrenaline levels drop again. He can’t stand around and wait it out. Time is of the essence. He is out in the open and he doesn’t know who is watching from the empty windows. Majid crouches down next to the dealer on the ground and starts rifling through his pockets. He doesn’t want the drugs. Cheap weed and cut coke. He might as well smoke rat poison. He just wants the money. His trembling fingers rip through receipts and dockets in search for crumpled bank notes. There are no street lights at night in Tor Bella Monaca. They shoot them out so you can’t see their faces before they cave yours in. He can’t see shit.

A soft crunch comes from behind him. Majid freezes. He can feel his heartbeat in his whole body, thrusting like a piston in an engine. Steps. Not just one person, but several. Before he can fully register the threat, Majid is back on his feet. He turns, caught between the approaching strangers and his prize. They come from the open mouth of the alley. Five heads. Fucked odds. 

Majid straightens up to his full height, throws back his shoulders, lifts his chin. He tries to look bigger, surer, than he is. At his sides his fingers slowly curl in. The men slink towards him like a pack of jackals, seizing him up, scenting his prey. He shouldn’t be surprised to run into a gang around these parts. The suburb is probably meticulously split up into territories, territories he doesn’t know jackshit about. He is basically poaching. Here come the riflemen. 

Now that they’re closer Majid can make out some faces. They have fanned out as if to cut off his escape routes, to catch him should he try to bolt. They needn’t have bothered. Majid wasn’t the bolting type. He cracks his knuckles in lieu of teeth to bare.

“You got a permit for those, killer?” The man closest to him comes to a stop and smiles. He gestures to Majid’s hands. Pure condescension drips from his lips as he speaks. In the shadows his face looks hollow. Majid can barely guess at his eyes but he knows they are on him. He can  _ feel  _ the foreign gaze creeping over his body. But the voice is soft, almost coaxing. Yeah, ‘smarmy’ is the word for it. 

“Fuck around and find out.” Majid grunts. His shoulders are so stiff with tension he can barely move them. He tries to keep an eye on all of them but they shift independently. The massive guy in the back looks about ready to take Majid up on the offer but the man next to him grabs him by the back of his jacket and keeps him in place. Majid registers that with narrowed eyes. Meanwhile the speaker lets out a laugh, fully throwing his head back. His hair is longer than Majid first thought. 

“Let’s not be hasty,” The man continues, the echo of his laugh still ringing in his tone. Majid has to assume that one is the leader of the group. No one else seems eager to chime in. “I really don’t think you want to say anything you’ll regret, no?” With that, he slides a long-fingered hand towards his belt and pushes back the fabric of his jacket to reveal the shining metal of a gun tucked into his waistband. The ball of anger and alarm in Majid’s stomach hardens into a stone and sinks. His shoulders sink with it. He forces his fists to unfurl even as he grinds his jaw against the burning powerlessness that gnaws at the back of his mind. A smattering of cackling bursts from the supporting cast at the alley entrance. 

The leader grins along, broader than should be humanly possible. “There’s a good boy. Very good.” He coos while Majid struggles to rein in his baser impulses which are clearly dictating that he should punch that smug smile right off that fucker’s face. “Now,” The man claps his hands together, a gesture that immediately melts into a dismissive wave aside. Majid shifts his weight to no longer block the other’s path completely. “Let’s see the damage. Sperma, Ricca. Check if he’s still alive.” 

This direct command finally breathes some life into the gang. Two of them split off and beeline for the crumbled body behind Majid. One, the stockier type, tries to shoulder past him and cuts it too close. Majid feels the push against his body. Bone jams into bone. It is a direct collision, some schoolyard bully shit. He doesn’t truly think it through, he just shoves back. He is built broader than the other man and it thoroughly offsets the gangster’s balance. He staggers out of the way and can just barely catch himself before he would stumble into the house wall. The two men face off. Tempers flare. Majid’s stoic mask just manages to conceal his frustration. If they think he is likely to tuck tail they have another thing coming. But there’s the spokesman again, interfering. His gun is in his hand now and pointed straight at Majid’s heaving chest.

“Ah, ah, ah. Let’s play nice.” He gestures with it as if it’s a damn laserpointer. Majid tries to get a little out of range but there is nowhere to move to without implying a retreat. “Ricca, get your ass in gear. Give our guest some space. We want to be courteous hosts, don’t we?” 

Said and done. ‘Ricca’ and the other guy turn the unconscious drug dealer over and check his breathing, and no doubt the contents of his pockets. Majid doesn’t look back but judging by the silent exchange over his shoulder they confirm that he lives. The outcome of their little investigation feels like a mere formality. People die on these streets all the damn time. That is no different here than anywhere else. The leader, too, doesn’t look overly invested. He is still staring at Majid with his pale eyes. This time Majid decides to stare back, wracking his brain to remember if he had seen him anywhere before. Under the weight of his gaze, the man’s body language morphs. No longer coolly threatening, no longer smug and patronizing. His features shift, his shoulders straighten, his stance relaxes. The gun barrel veers away from Majid’s vital organs. 

“Well! No harm no foul, eh?” He grins and runs his hand through his hair to card some strands out of his face. “I would’ve hated for us to get off on the wrong foot.” His mouth turns downward into a childish moue. Majid can’t quite keep the confused frown at bay now. Sure, everyone has their own style but this doesn’t feel like the prelude to a gang-style execution. They aren’t even trying to rough him up. 

“The fuck do you want from me, man?” Majid decides to cut to the chase. He puts as much inconvenienced annoyance into his tone as he can. Who the hell was this clown? 

“You are the guy who flattened the Serbian back in Ostia, right?” 

That one comes out of the left field. Majid stumbles over what else he meant to spit at the stranger. He pauses, bewildered. His mind immediately begins to race. Sure, there has been a Serbian, a blond gorilla of a man, who had a run-in with Majid’s fist when he first arrived in Italy. He just can’t figure out what that has to do with anything, or how the story of that stupid back alley brawl has traveled this fast. “What of it?”

“What of it?” Another off-kilter chuckle. “You broke his jaw with one punch, that’s what.”

“Great. I’m not paying for his shit. I got no money.” Majid hurries to get that in there. Now the spiel is starting to adopt familiar patterns. They must have tailed him for a while. Well, shake him down as they might, he isn’t going to cough up. You can’t rob a poor man. 

“I don’t give a single fuck about his shit. I don’t want money either.” The leader finally clicks the safety back on and puts the gun away in a show of good faith. Then a finger wags in Majid’s direction. “I’m only interested in one thing, and that is you.”

“...What?” 

The guy has features like quicksilver. Majid can’t process as fast as the expressions on his face shift and change. An almost child-like excitement suddenly brightens the Italian’s face. His eyes grow in size as he grins back at him with all his teeth. “Just imagine it. Brawn like yours, brains like mine? There’ll be no stopping us. We want you in the gang.” He offers this to him like a piece of candy, temptingly waves it under his nose. 

Majid stands, a little beside himself, next to the slowly waking body of the dealer he tried to rob five minutes ago. He can feel that he has opened his mouth to speak but he got nothing. No, wait. It just came back to him. He scoffs a laugh and turns his head away, “You got a screw loose or something?”

“Think it through, hm? There’s good money in it for you. More than you’d get here, scavenging like a fucking sewer rat. Other guys would blow me for a chance to work with us.” 

“Don’t get your hopes up.” Majid bites back, grimacing at the thought. Still, how often does a job offer just flutter in through the window like this? He needs money. Rome isn’t what he had in mind when he left the Netherlands, and he hasn’t even made it to Rome. He is stranded in a fucking suburb where stray drug addicts would shiv him for a fiver. He can’t get out if he doesn’t play the game. That, too, is the same everywhere. He looks at the gangster, at the cocksure way he presents himself and the nervous energy that titters underneath the shiny veneer. Majid inhales through his nose. “...I’ll think about it.”

“There we go! That’s the first step to success. I knew you would see sense.” The man swaggers towards him, happy to ignore the way Majid tenses away from him, and grabs his shoulder. His touch smells of sanitizer and stale metal which doesn’t mix well. “You won’t regret it, my friend.”

“And who do I owe this opportunity to?” Majid flattens his voice to a cutting edge. His upper lip curls into the semblance of a dismissive snarl when he feels the other’s breath on his cheek. His skin tingles under the strain of this proximity. He can feel the heat radiating from the man’s body so close to him.

“Where are my manners? Of course. I’m Fabio. You met my good friend, Ricca. This is,” He gestures vaguely towards his entourage while ‘his good friend Ricca’ scowls with red-rimmed, sunken eyes. “The rest of them. You’ll get acquainted in no time, I’m sure.”

His eyes wander briefly, glad to escape the piercing, uncomfortably intimate stare that Fabio imposed on him, “I’m Majid.”

“Majid.” Fabio’s smile sharpens to a point, a glint in his eyes, as if it is a personal pleasure of his to pronounce the name. At least he pronounces it well enough. His hand finally slips from the beaten up leather of Majid’s jacket. “This’ll be something really great. I can just feel it.”

  
  
  



End file.
